


No, nothing is as bad as it seems

by EponineTheStrange (gallifreyandglowclouds)



Category: Doctor Who RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-06
Updated: 2013-06-06
Packaged: 2017-12-14 04:07:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/832541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallifreyandglowclouds/pseuds/EponineTheStrange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Karen phones Alex when she can’t sleep, Alex phones Matt when she admits to not getting more than 2 hours a night since Patrick left her. Matt talks to her, Karen gets defensive, that night they sleep in the trailers, Matt is filming late, he walks past Karen’s trailer and he’s her having a nightmare, he goes in and they talk, she realises she can sleep with someone else next to her. Cute fluffy moments of friendship talks over the nights.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No, nothing is as bad as it seems

At 3:30 in the morning, when Karen is stupidly sick of tossing and turning, she gives in and calls Alex. 

There’s really no good reason as to why she calls Alex - maybe it’s the need to get another woman’s perspective on things, but she’s no closer to Alex than she is to Matt or Arthur. She could call her mother, who has had notoriously irregular sleep patterns since Karen left home at age sixteen, but she doesn’t feel that this is something she wants to call her mother about. A conversation about Alex having a touch of insomnia springs free from the recesses of her memory as the phone rings. 

“Hey,” she says, “it’s Karen.” 

“I figured. I don’t know that many other Scots who would call me at half-three in the morning. What’s up, Karen?” 

Karen rubs her temples. “Don’t know. I can’t really sleep, and I just needed to talk to someone.” 

“I’d noticed that you were looking rather tired on set the other day. Any particular reason?” 

“I suppose it’s been weird not having Patrick around,” Karen says. “It’s the first time I’ve slept in an empty bed for a while.” 

“That,” Alex says, with a laugh, “I understand. My question is, Karen, why haven’t you called Matt about this? I mean, you’re closer to him than anyone.” 

She doesn’t reply for a while, because there is literally no rational reason why she isn’t talking to Matt. It just feels weird talking to him about Patrick, because he doesn’t talk to her about Daisy stuff and their relationships with other people is not something that they talk about, even though they spend copious amounts of time together. 

“I don’t know. You’re first in my contacts, I suppose?” Karen says.

“The no sleeping thing,” Alex says, “is this becoming routine?”  

“Yeah.” Alex has ESP, Karen is sure of it. “How did you know?

“I know these things, Karen. I was young once. Try putting your phone away, and perhaps you’ll sleep better,” Alex says. “I’ll see you on set tomorrow, Karen.” 

She hangs up. 

Karen turns her phone off and puts it on her nightstand. She still doesn’t get back to sleep, though. 

* * *

The last person that Matt expects to hear from at four in the morning is Alex, because Karen seems to have a monopoly on his late night/early morning phone calls. 

“Hi Alex,” Matt says, and she doesn’t give him a chance to ask why the hell she’s calling him so early before she starts talking. 

“You know, Karen hasn’t been sleeping particularly well since she and Patrick broke up, and she called me about it, but the interesting thing is that apparently she hasn’t spoken to you about this, and I think that perhaps it would be more productive for you two to talk about this instead of having Karen call me at odd hours of the morning.” 

That’s a lot for Matt’s very tired brain to handle, because he didn’t know that Karen and Patrick ended things, and he has noticed that she’s look more tired than usual on set, but to be honest they haven’t been hanging out as much as usual since shooting for series seven started. 

“Oh,” Matt says, “I literally had no idea about any of that.” 

“Karen hasn’t spoken to you about it?” 

“Nope.” 

Alex makes a dissatisfied-sounding noise on the other end of the line. “I thought you two were practically married.” 

Matt groans, because as much as he really likes Alex this is not a conversation he’d ever pictured having with her, and it’s amazing how many of his and Karen’s friends have jumped on the ‘secretly married’ bandwagon.

“We don’t talk about… personal stuff?” He says. His brain isn’t working. He has to be on set in four hours and this is eating in to his precious sleeping time. 

But now he’s worried about Karen, and he knows what’s going on, and so he doesn’t know whether he hates or loves Alex for that. 

“Well, you two sort it out, and I’ll see you tomorrow,” she says, and hangs up. 

Well. 

* * *

Karen feels like she’s been hit by a truck by the time she gets on set the next morning. Her eyes are burning, and she feels like it takes her thirty seconds to make simple decisions, like whether she would like sugar in her tea or not. 

(In fact, she’s so tired that she tells the person who has somehow ended up with the unfortunate job of getting her tea that she would in fact like sugar in her tea, which she normally does not have, and when they return with a mug full of Earl Grey she takes one sip and spits it out all over the grass. Oops.)

The one thing that she didn’t prepare herself for was Matt deciding to be Matt and be a nosy person. (Alex is partly to blame for this too, which Karen understands on a rational level but a rational level is hard to reach when you’ve slept two hours of the last twenty-four.)

He sits down in the chair beside hers, smiles at her, and says, “Really sorry to hear about Patrick.” 

“Where the fuck did you hear -“ 

“And also, I could recommend some things to help you sleep if you felt like you needed it.” 

“Alex called you last night, didn’t she?” Karen says, mentally shooting daggers at Alex’s head from a hundred metres away. 

Matt nods. “Strictly speaking, it was this morning. Listen, Kaz, I know that we don’t talk about relationship stuff with each other for whatever reason, but if I can do anything to help you with the sleep, just let me know.” 

“Maybe I don’t want your help,” she snaps. “Maybe that’s why I didn’t tell you in the first place.” 

“Sorry,” Matt says, eyes focussed straight ahead. “You’re my friend, and I just want to make you not feel shitty. But suit yourself.” 

He gets up and walks away, and she just keeps staring at the ground and wondering what she can do to keep herself from bitching everyone out like that. 

* * *

They have to shoot during the night for this particular episode, so they end up having to sleep in their trailers from the end of the afternoon for several hours until they get everything set up for the night shoot. 

The only issue with Matt’s trailer is that it doesn’t have a bathroom, which means that if he’s been mainlining coffee all day (which he has been), so he finds that he’s in and out a fair bit because of certain essential bodily functions. This route takes him straight past Karen’s trailer.

It’s about ten-thirty by the time Matt goes for one of his several bathroom breaks, and as he walks by Karen’s trailer he hears a bloodcurdling scream. 

His mind jumps to homicide, and he runs to the door (and then ends up running in to it because she locked it from the inside, which makes his murder theory implausible) and ends up banging on the door like a crazy person.

“Kazza! Kazza!” Matt yells. 

It takes a couple of minutes, but she eventually comes to the door and opens it. Her eyes are half-open and bloodshot, her hair is messy, and she generally looks like a bit of a mess. 

They have an awkward staring match for a few seconds, and then Matt says, “Are you currently being murdered?” 

“The door was locked from the inside, and I’m alone,” Karen grumbles, “so no.” 

“Are you okay?” 

She shakes her head. 

“Can I come in?” 

She nods, and he follows her in to her trailer. She sits down on her couch, and Matt sits down beside her. 

Karen rubs her eyes and says, “So, I’ve been having nightmares.”

“That explains the screaming.”

She nods. “There always seem to be severed body parts involved.”

“Perhaps you need to lay off the Criminal Minds, Kaz.”

That joke falls very, very flat, and she gives him the most withering of withering looks. 

“It’s been a lot worse since Patrick and I broke up,” she says. “I’ve been struggling with sleeping alone all the time. It’s a big change.” 

“I sympathise,” Matt says. 

“Yeah.” She leans her head on his shoulder, and says, “I just want to sleep.” 

Matt puts his arm around her shoulder and pulls her closer to him. “I can sleep here if you think that might help.” 

“It might, you know,” Karen says. “It’s been a while since our last cuddle.” 

So they do snuggle up on Karen’s couch, and there are some acrobatics involved (because it’s not a huge couch and they’re both about 5’11) but they eventually end up with limbs tangled together, and Matt stays awake for a while, but Karen is asleep in about thirty seconds. which comforts Matt immensely. 

Arthur comes and knocks on their door a few hours later to tell them that filming starts again, he actually walks in to Karen’s trailer, because Matt is stupid and forgot to lock the door. 

To Arthur’s immense credit, Matt thinks, he doesn’t look remotely surprised to see them curled up together. 

“Wake up sleepy head,” Matt whispers to Karen. “Filming’s starting soon.” 

She blinks a couple times before properly opening her eyes, and then smiles at Matt. “That’s the best sleep I’ve had in ages.” 

* * *

So the thing where Matt goes over to Karen’s flat to help her get her eight hours of sleep. 

The better part is watching Matt try and avoid the paps waiting outside, and she does watch from the window because one night, after a couple of glasses of wine, they conclude that it’s probably less suspicious if they leave separately. (They’re idiots. Karen is well aware of this.)

This habit continues when they’re back in London together, and it seems to get all coupled up with spending all of their free time together. 

(No, nothing romantic happens. Okay, Matt’s kissed her on the forehead a couple times when she wakes up, and he never gets out of bed before she does. And he makes her breakfast. That’s it, honestly.) 

“You know,” he says one morning in March where they haven’t yet gotten out of bed and his arms are still wrapped around her and her head is on his chest, “maybe I should start coming over every second night.” 

“How come?” Karen asks, perplexed. 

“Well, you’re going to LA soon, and you won’t have me to use as a human teddy bear any more,” Matt says. 

Oh. That. 

He does start coming to stay with her less and less, and though it’s rough at first, she gets used to sleeping without someone beside her. 

He does come and stay with her on her last night in the UK, and he helps her with last minute packing. She buys him Indian takeaway, and they watch  _Love, Actually_ even though it’s totally the wrong time of year for it. 

Later that night, they’re curled up in Karen’s bed, and she’s fighting desperately against sleep because this is going to be one of her last times with Matt for a really, really long time and she’s going to miss him terribly. 

She thinks that maybe he’s asleep already, because his breathing is easy and rhythmical, and she looks up and him and catches him looking at her with an incredible amount of tenderness in his eyes, and that both warms and breaks her heart. 

He kisses her on the forehead. “‘Night, Kaz.” 

They both fall asleep.


End file.
